1. Israeli air bombing campaign. powerful and pushed back civilians.
2. Israeli troops go into Lebanon and few days come out, some media sources say weeping and carrying their wounded, others like foxnews showed pictures of them smiling as if returning from winning a WW2 or something.
3. THE QUESTION: what is it that Israel achieved exactly besides bombing civilians?

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Pushing Hezbollah back farther from their borders, and inserting a barrier (international troops) between them and Hezbollah. Hezbollah had control of Southern Lebanon before. They wont have control now.

See? Didnt change the subject.

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good you did not change the subject. this is something i have a hard time believing will happen if it does, you are right, time will show. i do not at all understand why such bombing campaign and the troops lol followed by their almost immediate pullout without personaly dissarming them, now they will stay armed and why did Israel ask UN to dissarm hezbola? oh yes they did. this is extremely strange to me, they were right there, and yet they decided to pull back out even as i quoted above "no deal on disarming Hezbollah", UN will not do it period.

i think this was just monkeydiking around by Israel to prove that they can do more then just drop bombs on civilians, hezbola is still armed and i doubt they ever even left the region...i think theres a lot we are not being told.

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Part of the deal, in this recent conflict, was to eliminate (or seriously degrade) the Hizbollah "command and control" structures.

Consider, that Hizbollah is far more than just a paramilitary organization. They are a legitimate political body, they're fully and effectively organized at the local and regional level (to be able to provide social services, for example, that even the government of Lebanon finds intractable), they're a conduit of massive amounts of money from various neighboring countries (about half a billion dollars last year alone), and so on - in other words, they're a very large organization, with a lot of pokers in a lot of fires.

Basically, what this latest assault means, is that Hizbollah will probably have to turn its attentions "inward" for a while, focusing on things like rebuilding infrastructure, providing needed food and water and medicine to the people at large, and so on. Like every large organization, Hizbollah is resource-dependent, and therefore any shift towards services necessarily means a shift away from the military.

Secondarily, as an entirely separate issue, we have the ease with which neighboring countries can ship weapons into Lebanon. Now that all the access paths have basically been destroyed, anything that comes in will have to do so under the watchful eyes of the Israelis. So my guess is, they'll let Hizbollah rebuild for a while, and then they'll have to take them down again (another notch or two - look at it like a recurring "maintenance" activity).

It seems to me, that Israel has given up any hope of actually occupying southern Lebanon, they tried that for eighteen years and it didn't work, and when it became clear that's where the fight was going again, they backed away and found a way to become satisfied with whatever little they'd achieved.

Next time though, Lebanon as a nation is in serious trouble, or at least it "could" be, if Israel chooses to go down that path. There's no doubt that Israel could completely wipe Lebanon off the map, if it chose to do so. The alternatives might not be very desirable though, and hence the cautiousness on Israel's part. At least now, there's some semblance of actual government in Lebanon - but if that goes away, there's no telling what might happen.

Simple.

They put the responsibility for the future into the hands of the UN.

IOW Israels said..
"Ok you guys all want a cease fire. We agree to it.....you fail though and we won't play that game again"





I find it utterly disgusting that the USA voted to approve a resolution that in effect saved a Terrorist Group from destruction. You can thank the UN for Heazbollahs propaganda becasue Hezbollah itself didn't win jack squat..it was rescued by fools.

No offense, DuH2, 'cause your information is as good as mine, but it seems to me that it would be a misperception to consider that Hizbollah has somehow been "trounced".

They clearly have a well-defined strategy, it's just that the Israelis don't fully understand it yet.

Consider this, for example: North Korea has apparently been helping Hizbollah build miles and miles of tunnels underneath all those apartment buildings from which they "suddenly appear out of nowhere" and then "disappear again just as fast" -

http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_25474.shtml

Plus, while their daily financial and political infrastructure was being taken apart, they still managed to retain pretty much a 24-hour on-the-air broadcasting presence (via al-Manar), and also they managed to rain 250 rockets a day on Israel, even in the last day of the war.

So, I think it would be a serious mistake to believe that Hizbollah has somehow been "diminished" in this fight. If anything, they'll be able to use the aftermath to further bolster their domestic political position. IMO and all that.

I'll say the woosy softy thing - I am not sure who won this war, I am not sure if anyone won this war, but I am quite sure who lost (again) the civilians, and mostly the kids, on both sides of that border.

It is the year 2006, by the heavens above, can't we find better ways to solve our differences than killing children!

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“From the point of view of the pharmaceutical industry, the AIDS problem has already been solved. After all, we already have a drug which can be sold at the incredible price of $8, 000 an annual dose, and which has the added virtue of not diminishing the market by actually curing anyone.”

^^Look^^ at this Democrat and how he is a pro-terrorist. He approves and sanctions kidnapping. He approves and sanctions terrorism like suicide bombing and lobbing rockets over a border. Indeed the face of evil.

That's funny, I don't draw that conclusion at all, from Bushndick's post.

I consider that he's seriously asking the question: what did Israel actually "win" by escalating this war?

Did they actually do any real serious damage to Hizbollah? Well, yes and no - yes in terms of the infrastructure, no in terms of their popular support.

Did they actually gain anything for Israel? Probably "no", except if we can count the military intelligence that may (or may not) have been gained in the endeavor - which we'll have no view to, until the "next" conflagration.

Israel seems to be asking the same questions - at least, it's serious enough so they've begun an internal investigation into the conduct of the war.

That's serious enough - if you know Israel, my prediction would be that at least one high-level head is going to roll over this one.

I dont beleive Israel ever wanted a protracted war....they wanted security, and they wanted it immediately. Bombing has accomplished that.

Had they used troops they would still have won eventually, but it would have taken much much longer, and cost more lives. They warned the civilians before they started bombing. That is more than Hezbollah would have done.

How would Hezbollah ever be permanently disarmed? Hezbollah will never permanently disarm. Even if Lebanon were to demand it (which they will not).

The buffer zone will be far more permanent than the temporary disarming of a terrorist group. Hezbollah will now have to blast through the UN to get to Israel.

Hezbollah has lost a lot of advantages they had before. It will be harder to attack Israel next time. Or kidnap their soldiers.

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